Not sure why that's relevant?

I often use(d) Youtube-dl to grab 1080p videos to watch once, not to keep them. eg as an alternative to Firefox

That's because YouTube itself recently seemed to change something about their streaming, such that some 1080p video's now stutter and don't work correctly.

So, I download them to a temp directory then watch with VLC instead. Then batch clean up the temp directory when it's getting full.

eg Youtube-dl is just another Youtube client, no different from a browser. If you're saying that watching media via Youtube-dl is different than watching it via Firefox... to me that sounds incredibly bizarre.

A video streaming service is literally a host for video content + UI's for accessing it.

Whether YouTube internally stores those video's as single files, as multiple versions of a file, as chunked pieces, or whatever... who cares? They'll obviously optimise their backend storage for their particular needs.

Whether you start viewing in the middle of a video, or from the start... are you're trying to say it makes a difference?

Because VLC can seek around a video too.

With YouTube-dl, I download the video, and watch it. At some point, it gets deleted.

With Firefox, I download the video and watch it. At some point, it gets deleted.

Are you saying it makes a difference whether or not it gets assembled into "a file" on the receiving side in order to watch it in an appropriate player?

It's unlikely transcoding a video added anything creative to the process.

In fact, if transcoding a video added anything creative to the process, you would have two copyrights: one for the original creative work, and a second for the derivative (transcoded) work.

The OP's comment was different. He was using youtube-dl to download videos uploaded by his own clients, which was fine because they're the copyright owners. Transcoding doesn't generally create a separate copyrighted work because at least for these types of media, the underlying representation of the bits doesn't matter.

Note: this isn't fair use. Fair use is a defense to violating copyright, and a copyright owner can't violate their own copyright ...but if they licensed one or more copyrights to a third party, they could violate the third party's copyrights depending on the terms of that license.

It could still be in Youtube's interest to prevent this from happening.

I'm asking why you would expect a competitor to make your own product more compelling for your customers.

This is a further example that Youtube-dl is there to circumvent the intended functionality of Youtube.

And in fact it is illegal for YouTube to lock your data within their service in that manner in the EU. You have a right to export your data and they have the responsibility to make it make possible to move that data to a competitor where technically feasible. And it clearly is technically feasible.

There’s a lot of talking past each other going on in this thread. Nobody is defending the RIAA or DMCA. But they exist and this outcome seems painfully obvious.

RIAA being mean, DMCA being bad and copyright being outdated doesn’t matter here. What matters in that the law exists and YouTube-dl made it really easy for the RIAA to make a compelling case against them.

Google isn't making that case because Youtube is YOUtube. The whole point is that it's a platform for family videos, amateurs, and all sorts of other things.

If the RIAA didn't want their content Youtube-dl'able, they should have used one of their locked-down platforms. They went to Youtube because the locked-down corporate platforms don't have the eyeballs. Now, they're trying to convert Youtube into one of those platforms.

My expectation is the RIAA will prevail, but because of deeper pockets and the potential for a multi-million dollar legal battle, not because they're on solid legal ground.

Youtube has legitimate reasons to try and prevent people from downloading content from their site. Youtube-dl is clearly there to enable people to do that. Rightsholders can use this as another argument that Youtube-dl violates (or is designed to violate) the DMCA.

I'm not defending the RIAA or DMCA here but I can understand their argument and why they are making it.

It’s a pretty easy case to make. Any other use of the tool is again, completely and totally irrelevant.

To be even more clear I’m sure YouTube-dl is a useful tool and I think such things should exist. However, this is an important lesson when making and owning these tools. Don’t do the RIAAs work for them.

Some people use YouTube as their repository. Or if they lost the original files it would be a way to recover something. I once had to download mp3's of my own music from MySpace because I had an HD crash and lost them.

I wondered when this would happen. I'm. not referring yotube-dl specifically but the third-party repository problem such as Github and YouTube where material exists principally on one site.

The fact that the RIAA is involved makes it high profiled case and should warn people that distributed systems/repositories are a much better (safer) idea.

That's primarily what's got the RIAA's panties in a twist, is that youtube-dl is 'bypassing' youtube's protection measures to prevent their site from being effectively scraped.